Suppose there is a 1% risk of nuclear war this century killing a billion people. That is in some sense equivalent to a 100% chance of a nuclear war killing 10 million people.<p>To put that in perspective, "Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250 000 additional deaths per year, from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress."[0] which is 5 million in 20 years, or 10 million by 2070.<p>So it's possible to ask the question: Does building new civilian nuclear reactors increase the risk of nuclear war more than it decreases the damage of climate change?<p>It might seem that the answer has to be "No", but we have to consider the possibility that preventing nuclear proliferation and geopolitical instability would be much easier if all non-rogue nations agreed to not build any more nuclear power stations.<p>Even if the risk of nuclear war could only be decreased by 1%, that's still 100,000 expected lives saved, and eventually the contribution of nuclear energy to solving climate change might drop below that threshold[1], if renewables and energy storage systems prove to be sufficient replacements.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health" rel="nofollow">https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-cha...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://futurism.com/use-nuclear-power-decline-why" rel="nofollow">https://futurism.com/use-nuclear-power-decline-why</a>